


A word on gambling

by Drosera_Sundews



Category: Elsewhere University (Webcomic)
Genre: Bets & Wagers, Deals, Deals with the Fae, Gambling, Gen, Trinkets, and why you shouldn't, gamble nothing you cannot lose, guard your virtues well, spiritual mutilation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-23
Updated: 2017-02-23
Packaged: 2018-09-26 11:01:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9892499
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Drosera_Sundews/pseuds/Drosera_Sundews
Summary: Not all who come to the Elsewhere University come to study. Some come to bet, to bargain or to gamble.Just remember:Guard your Virtues well





	

**Author's Note:**

> Set in CharminglyAntiquated's Elsewhere U (https://elsewhereuniversity.tumblr.com/) A university set atop a fairy hill.

Not all who come to the Elsewhere University come to study. Most have a vague idea of what they’re getting into, whether from stories told by old, withered family members or odd advertisements, folders or websites filled with cryptic warnings. An unfortunate few go in unprepared, and either catch up quickly or pay the price.  
  
Some come to bet, to bargain or to gamble.  
  
While some of them are just plain greedy, it’s mostly just the lost causes. The ones who’ve heard ‘no’ a few times too often by many different doctors. The other students treat them with poorly concealed pity and resigned respect. After all, who wouldn’t turn to desperate measures when in their shoes? The world hasn’t been fair to them. The gentry are, at the very least. Cruel and merciless, true, but fair and honest at their cores.  
  
Yet, the gamblers come in many different forms. A girl who’s lungs once belonged to another, the second son of a rich businessman, a young dancer who trained and fought for years to reach her dream and now found that her achilles tendon, both literally and figuratively, was just a few millimetres too short.  
  
_Oh yes, you can wait for favours, but each and every person in this school with half a brain to them will do anything to help the gentry, if only not to get on their bad side. And without an agreement they may repay you in any way they see fit. The gifts will be valuable, but not what you need. You’ll need to show initiative, you’ll need to gamble with all that you have._  
  
The problem with gambling with the fair folk is the currency. They are not interested in money, and there are very little precious goods they cannot acquire. Promises and debts are an option, but are risky when not very, very carefully defined. Some might have weird preferences (like that odd horse-like skeleton that will go to great lengths for shiny plastic beads). Most however don’t.  
  
They are called the Exchange Student, with capitals, because that’s what they do. They are a student, everyone is certain about that. They sit in math class, biology, sometimes in history. They hang out with the programmers and the art majors. They wear their iron, carry their salt, and seem perfectly normal, even from the corner of your eye. Unsuspecting, until you deliberately come to them.  
  
_Please leave your iron and salt at the door. Don’t worry, as long as we’re discussing business no one will disturb us. It is merely a show of faith._  
  
They’re called the Exchange Student because that’s what they do. Exchange of currencies. Exchange of valuta.  
  
_Don’t worry, I am a professional. The procedure will be quick and painless. I cannot promise a lack of scars, but damage will be minimal, I have done this many times before.”_  
  
_“I hope you have brought a trinket?”_  
  
When the Exchange Student invites you to ‘discuss business’ you take two things with you. A trinket and an offering. The offering is something small. Some food, a nice rock, a coin. Some art majors perform their favourite song, or offer a drawing or a statue, anything goes. It’s but a small fee.  
  
The trinket can also be anything, though of course there are rules. ‘It needs to last,’ says one of the engineers, ‘something sturdy, something that doesn’t break easily.’  
  
‘Something small which is easily concealed. Something you can carry with you. You’ll want to.’  
  
‘and for the love of everything, don’t take something living! Not even a plant! Well… unless you’re absolutely sure what you are doing.’  
  
The Exchange Student will make a circle around them and their customer. Most often made of candles, rocks, or sometimes even coins. Mostly they will take you somewhere silent, somewhere not easily disturbed. Though there are tales of that one time they sat someone down in the middle of the southern canteen, their circle made out of various plastic cups and mugs. No one dared disturb them.  
  
The procedure is painless. A few incantations, some mental exercises, guided meditation, long scaled talons grasping at the edges of your soul, carefully picking you apart.  
  
You’ll come back to yourself, Trinket carefully clasped in your hands. Looking exactly the same as you went in. The item in your hands will have a word on it. A single word, usually golden letters and in the exact handwriting of the person holding it.  
  
_Courage, Willpower, Kindness, Insight, Patience, Optimism, Strength._  
  
Anything goes. And that’s how the students of Elsewhere University were made to carefully reconsider their unspoken rule of ‘gamble nothing you cannot lose.’  
  
Turns out that those who take to gambling can lose more than they’d ever imagined.  
  
It’s said that it’s a very jarring experience to have an integral part of your being cut away from you. It’s said that, although not painful, students who’ve undergone the procedure spend the first few days in a haze of discomfort, fully aware that something is wrong, something is not as it should be, and they will grab their Trinket and will press it to their skin and refuse to part with it. Their body and spirit knowing where it belongs, but just not being able to get it there.  
  
Quite a few of these Trinkets are being kept on the campus. Most are surrounded in mystery. A few students are suspected of having made a deal with the Exchange Student, like the photographer, the one with the lip ring, who owns this small umbrella that jingles when it rains. Or the student who always wears pearls. Many have cast a glance to spy for golden letters.  
  
Some are more open about their deals with the Exchange Student. It’s a tradition among programming majors to bind their _Insight_ to a rubber duck, the sillier the better. It’s ridiculed a lot, but the tradition stands strong across the years. And it’s said that sometimes when one of the programmers is really stuck in one of their endless webs of codes the others will aid them by placing their rubber ducks in a circle around the computer. The ones willing to share their _Insight_ are said to be nigh unstoppable.  
  
The Trinkets are like casino tokens. The gentry find them irresistible, and will go to great lengths to acquire them. They never steal them, instead opting to either win or trade them, playing by their own odd rules.  
  
Good gamblers can get anything from the gentry. Magical weapons, exotic skills and other gifts. Sometimes in the form of small objects engraved with gold.  
  
Just remember not to let them catch you cheating.  
  
Another good thing to remember: even though the gentry will not steal a Trinket as by their rules, the same cannot be said of the human students. Guard your virtues well.  
  
_Losing a part of yourself is highly unadvisable, always._  
  
Some try to cheat the system. Cutting of pieces they think they can do without. The second son who came specifically to gamble for glory decided he could do without his fears, especially if he was to join the fae for poker night. He had the Exchange Student cut away his Fear. Covered it in salt, put it in a box of rowan wood and gave the key to a friend, to safeguard. He then shamelessly stepped into the queens quarters, asking her what it was worth, what she was willing to give him.  
  
Most were pretty sure the noise drifting through the windows that night didn’t come from rugby practice.  
  
The defected dancer did not wish to gamble. She knew what she had, what she wanted and what she wished to sacrifice for that.  
  
“I offer you my _Preservance_. I have trained and trained for years on uncertain odds. It is finely honed and very strong and I hope to not need it anymore after today. In return I would like a better body. Suited for a dancer. So that I will not get injured and that stupid things like too short tendons or too weak joints will no longer hold me back. That is my bargain.”  
  
Ḏ̤͕̜̄E̶̱̭A̖̙͞L̮͔̙͖͖ͧ͢  
  
No one is quite sure she got what she wished for. Her body is certainly suited to dancing. Waving and mesmerizing, hypnotizing even. All students on campus know to avert their eyes. Things like that are dangerous, they know.  
Few have tried to peek at her face, to see if they could find any trace of their former classmate back. To see if she was happy.  
  
It’s hard to tell emotions from a face that has no eyes.  
  
She’s rarely seen anymore, these days. Apparently she dances for the queen now. An honour, truly.  
  
Legends tell of one gambler that made it out with both her Trinket and her desired price. The girl with the lungs that did not belong to her. The girl who came to the university with only two years left to live, and nothing left to lose. She sought out the Exchange Student in her second week, bringing two large, copper coins she’d saved to put on her eyelids when all went wrong.  
  
She did not cheat and she did not bargain. She gambled. She went to that one odd place in the library, stepped into the shadows, and was not seen for two whole months.  
  
A single game of cards may take that long. Especially with such high stakes. Especially with the fae.  
  
They appreciate warriors. She had come to their table, faced with the entire court. She was given cards that had no numbers, but unfamiliar runes. She was not told the rules. Yet she played. Mimicking the others, she held her own for days and days and days.  
  
Of course she lost. The fae are rarely beaten at their own games.  
  
When she came back, stumbling, disoriented, underfed and horribly dehydrated, she remembered barely anything. Not the faces of her opponents, not the hand of cards she was dealt or what the other players had put on the table alongside her Trinket. She only remembered losing, the cold dread as she stared down at the horrid combination of cards her weak hand could not possibly compare with. And the queens cold crackling as she reached across the table for the small copper coin. And the horrid sensation of ice flooding her chest as her _Kindness_ was taken from her.  
  
_A very powerful Trinket indeed._  
  
She’d woken up laying on a table in the library. Gasping for breath through her dry, dry throat. A copper coin on a very thin chain wrapped around her neck. On one side the golden letters, on the other a complex pattern, a rune in an unknown language, (though a few very bright history student managed to decipher an ancient runic symbol for Air among the twining lines).  
  
They brought her to the medics, and it was only after thorough examination that the girl discovered that despite her sore throat, her breath came easier than it had in years.  
  
She never left Elsewhere University, afraid that whatever enchantment had been cast on her would falter when away from the queen. Instead she chose to finish the study she’d randomly signed up for in her mad gamble. She ended up a teacher, a permanent part of the staff. The others understood that sending her away would not be an option. Most other teachers had been students as well, after all. They understood the ways this place can change you.  
  
She still wears the amulet up to this day. Some say that this is not a choice born from the instinctive desire to keep a Trinket close, but that every time she removes it from her skin her breath will come short and her lungs will burn. Some even say that it cannot be removed, whether by choice or force. They say the queen enchanted it (too much, too powerful. Let it stay with the human. Where no fae can get their hands on it.)  
  
Some come to her still, for advice and tips on gambling. She’ll send them all away, discourage them. Even though deep inside she knows she’s made the right choice.  
  
‘It needs to last’ one of the engineers had told her. She grasps her amulet, the copper strong as ever, infused with unfamiliar magic keeping her alive. She knows her _Kindness_ will outlast her and wonders where it will end up.  
  
However much the memory haunts her, she hopes that maybe one day it will make its way back into the hands of the queen. Out of anyone, she certainly needs it the most.


End file.
